Dealing With the Internal Condition That Makes Kids Run From the Room – Myers R.

mute. There it is. I think that's it. It is. I love technology about this much. And what I'd like to be doing is sitting with Maggie right now, reading some of those books she's got and the technology always freaks me out. It's great when it works, but when it doesn't, you're screwed. Yeah. For those I've met it, what a treat to see you again. For those I haven't met, my name is Myers Raymer. Very grateful, recovered alcoholic from Central Texas in Kerrville, Texas now, which is after 40 years of being in Dallas, we finally moved to Central Texas and it's been a trip. I saw Noel on here. I saw Peter Mission and there's a whole bunch of these folks that I haven'T seen in a good bit of time. And Paul, thank you guys for being here. It's pretty sweet. I'm sitting where I live now, but it used to be a cabin like that. But Peter was here from France, had gotten over here and gotten sick with the flu right after he got here. And he spent a day or two in a bedroom. We'd toss some food in there every few hours. And I thought he might die in there. But he said he was OK. And I'll never forget when he crawled out. he looked like he was going to make it. It was pretty, um, it was pretty special. It really, really was. Um, y'all I've, I've talked to you guys, uh, a couple of times before, and I want to veer off a little bit and obviously, um、 you don't need to hear my story again. Uh, there's only a little piece of it that I want to talk about just to kind of bring people up to, up to speed, but the there's some other stuff that I really, really would like to talk about. The somebody asked me one time said, Myers, since I sobered up in January of 88 and and so I'm coming up on 33 years and somebody asked me if it was all the same or if it if I changed over a period of time or whatever. And the answer to that is, is that there were several things that happened to me in recovery that seemed to happen to a lot of other people um and i wish we could i wish we could make it happen to everybody but it doesn't uh some of us it just you know i'm kind of slow on the uptake and it just took me a while to learn some things that other people seem to have learned right off the bat and so um i sobered up in and just north of dallas in a group that was we had 32 meetings a week now listen to what i'm saying we had 32 meetings a week, and they were all discussion meetings. We had no big book studies, we had no literature studies, we had nothing. Golly, none of us knew anything. We just told a lot of stories and had a good time and laughed a lot. And they were delightful people. But But but I can tell you a couple of years in, I'm starting to do stupid stuff. And and I just I stayed sober. I didn't I didn'T drink or anything, but it was it got to be a little bit weird. My wife, who was completely digging the fact that I was sober, began to regret that I was sober because my behavior was so bizarre. Um, by the time I was four years sober, I had not worked the steps. I had a sponsor and name only. Um, I am manifesting restless, irritable, and discontent in a way that I had never ever seen before. And it was, it was terrifying for me. People talk about how their, their lives were so bizarre when they were drinking and doing other stuff. And then when they sobered up, it got all warm and fuzzy. And that's what I thought it was supposed to be. My life at four or five years sober was the worst I've ever experienced in my life. Um, I'm depressed to the point that I can't function. I can'T go to work. Um. My, my kids are afraid of me. My employees are afraid of me, um. It's just a mess. I'm starting to spend lots of money that I don't have. We talked about this the last time I bought an airplane and then I bought another airplane. And then a little while later, I bought a third airplane. Now guys, listen, if y'all know anything about aviation, it's expensive. It's ridiculous. And I now have three airplanes and two aircraft hangers and all the insurance and all of them maintenance that goes with it and all The other stuff. And I'm just trying to treat that. I'm trying to deal with that internal condition. And I bet y'ALL have seen the same thing. Maybe it manifests in different ways. How many of you men out there have sponsored guys and then later they started doing stupid stuff like porn or eating too much or gambling or whatever? I mean, it's an amazing thing how easy it is to slide over and start doing something else. We either are going to find some way to effectively treat that internal condition or we will eventually drink again, drug again or find some other way to deal with it. And it could be pretty it couldbe pretty uncomfortable. And so at seven years, I'm three weeks shy of seven years sober and I almost drank and it scared me really badly. I didn't want to drink. And I ended up calling Chris, my twin brother, who's still in the program. And at that time he was he sobered up two months before I did. And I told him that I was in trouble. And he said, I've been telling you this for two years. i've been telling you that you were going to be in trouble if you didn't get a sponsor and get busy with the work let me ask you how many of y'all realize that that we tend to teach what we're taught i mean i'm i'm looking at rob s and if rob if rob goes to a meeting um and the meeting says meeting makers make it you just don't drink even if your ass falls off and all these little one-liners off the wall like that if that's all that rob knows that's all that rob is going to do and worse that's all rob's going to teach when it's time for sponsorship to sponsor somebody and and that's the part that's scary is that we teach what we're taught um and so i'm i'm being i'm getting coached by a bunch of lovely people who to this day i love the debt to death their sweethearts but dang we just didn't know uh how deep and broad this program could be because we were too busy, um, talking about people's cats and bad day at work and you know, that sort of stuff. The, um... One of the, one of the things that, uh, over the years as a, as a old crusty guy from Central Texas, one OF the things THAT I've started doing a lot lately, is sit I'm sitting in meetings with my eyes closed, listening to what it is that I'm hearing. Because before I didn't really pay too much attention to it. There was a period of time in there when my oldest daughter was first coming to AA. And all of a sudden, I realized that she was in the same rooms that I was. And so I started being hypersensitive to what It was I was listening to and what I was hearing. So if, if I've sat in a meeting and people were just joking and laughing and not sharing any kind of solution, it was troublesome because my daughter who I love more than my own life is if that's all she's hearing, then she's not going to be hearing the things that's going to save her life or transform her life. And so it was, it's a, it was a problem Chris gave me the number of an old guy named Cliff Bishop Peter Mission and some of those cats that are in here knows new Clifford um and um Peter was I mean uh Clifford was just sort of a he was kind of crusty and kind of direct he wasn't mean he was just real direct with you and and it was a there were I'd never encountered anybody in AA like that I mean he would look at you and he would tell you the truth. Myers, I'm concerned about you. He would say that. And I'm thinking, well, it's going to be okay. And he goes, no, Myers, it is not going to be okay statistically based on where you are and based on the way you're thinking, you're going to either die of this disease or you're going to get locked up. One of the two. And I am going, hey, I just met you. How could you know that? and he goes well i know and and so he would continue to do that for years he would tell me the truth and and as i was so grateful that he did but he didn't he didn'T play games with me um and he sort of forced me to do the things that i had been trying to avoid i remember sitting with him and and joe mccue one time at a at a breakfast thing and we were sitting there talking And, and, and Joe looked at Clifford and said, I think you got your hands full with this guy. And Clifford said, i know it. I know it and and i looked at cliff and went like what what are you talking about. And, And Cliff looked at me and he said Myers, he said, trying to teach you this program, trying to get you up to speed will be the easiest thing in the world. It's not complicated and it's not hard you can do it like that. But damn son trying to get you to unlearn all the old things that you brought into this meeting and that you brought into, to this thing with you. I don't know if we can get past it. And I didn't understand at the time, but I do understand today. I I'm real clear on that. And so we, we just got busy and he got me through the steps and I began to transform and my wife said, Hey, you're, you'RE, youRE, I'M kind of digging you. maybe I won't kick you to the curb, which was a great deal. I totally dug that. My little kids, we ended up having three daughters and all three of them stopped running when I walked into the room. Guys, let me tell you, if you want to know if you're spiritually fit, if you are really who you think you are, pay attention to the way people react around you sometimes. When you walk in the front door and your little kids run to the other end of the house, y'all, we got a problem here. I mean, it's, it is, we have a problem because they don't know who's coming home. Is spiritual Myers coming home or is the marquee decide coming home? And I could, I could switch just like that. And it was pretty embarrassing to even think about these days. And so one of the things that Clifford used to talk about that finally connected one day and it was sort of miraculous because he'd been telling me for two years. But he said, Myers, he said it's it's irritating to me that two years after I've met you in two years, after we've worked the steps, you still come to every meeting wanting to be fed. You're still taking every meeting that you get there at some point in time, you're going to need to realize and recognize that you're there to feed, not be fed, you will be fed as a result of you being there anyway that's a given like this but your job is not to just sit there waiting for something to say something profound your job is to get off your skinny rear and go help somebody go feed somebody go try to help somebody understand these life-saving steps which logically don't make a whole lot of sense I mean there's there's a lot of things in there that just if you're used to being run from a position of self-will, then this idea of a spiritual experience is a little hard to grasp. That was a big deal for me. And even to this day, it's the first thing that I try to get folks to understand. How many of us have had really sweet people come up to us in the program and go, they'll pat you on the back and say, You're the most important person in this room. You just sit and listen. I totally understand the kindness, but I got to tell you like that. What I wished had happened was that a weekend somebody had pat me on the back and said, dude, it's time to get busy. Let's see if we can find some new guys that are just coming in and see if мы можем сделать что-то для их помощи. I think maybe some of you can see where this is already heading. We're getting ready to talk about this idea that 12-step work, step 12 stuff is not optional. It's not something that is there when it's convenient for you. It's Not. And so we need to kind of work with that. Let me ask you, how many of y'all have ever sat in meetings with people that have been sober quote-unquote sober 15 years 20 years 30 years and they're still powder dry and just grindy as hell i mean there there doesn't seem to be any real peace in them um and that it's possible to stay sober just going to a bunch of meetings i'll testify to that i did it fine i mean but but the bill wilson meant more and the the program meant more they assumed that we were going to do certain things that would take us to a different place. If y'all are looking for something to read sometime, go back and look at some of the writings that Bill Wilson did in the late 50s and 60s and the mid-60s especially when he got hooked up with Harry Thiebaud who was his psychiatrist and they began to write some stuff about if you google emotional sobriety some of those articles will come up. And they're fascinating because you begin to see the same, the stuff that Bill Wilson was experiencing, you began to see that there was a lot more than this just stay sober one day at a time stuff. And that kind of brings me up to my second eye-opening thing. The second thing that hit me square between the eyes and really, really affected me was this idea that there might be more to this program than just staying sober one day at a time. That maybe the first 100 really meant what they said when they talked about some of this stuff. And they introduced us to a whole bunch of promises, a bunch of prayers. They painted this picture that was sort of otherworldly. I mean, come on y'all. I'm walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. Holy cow. I mean, this is mind-blowing stuff. And Bill Wilson truly, they meant that. They understood that we could live a life transformed if we would just do some stuff. They didn't say go to a meeting. Guys, listen, this isthe part that drives me insane is how often we find ourselves in situations where people move the meeting to the center of their program and, and rely everything on that. Oh, I'm going to a bunch of meetings. Listen guys, when I'm suicidal in Dallas, Texas, I're going to six meetings a week. I mean, it's, it'S just ridiculous. Um, the, the am I like, am I representing everybody? No, of course not. But I'm telling you having sponsored hundreds and hundreds of men over the years i'm telling you my story lines up with a whole lot of folks out there that have struggled and found themselves in situations where they're indeed not drinking they're they're sober um but their lives are are a bit miserable they're a bit they just they're just not very free um in the words of mark houston uh years ago i smell more um and i do and and it was a it was a game changer for me to recognize and realize that those promises were there for a reason they were painting a picture of a life that we could live if we would just simply make the effort to move towards that life and nowhere in the book does it give us directions that it all relies on meetings that you're going to it really it talks about it relies on your ability to offer yourself work and self-sacrifice for others. Go look at how many times in the big book that theme is repeated over and over and ever again. And yet, guys, listen, I know hundreds and hundreds of people that I've met in AA who have never been to one book study, not one. They don't know anything that's in the book. They don'T know anything about the basic text. They DON'T know ANYTHING really about the steps other than they're a pain in the ass and I wish I didn't have to do them. They'll look at it like that. And then they'll laugh and think that it's funny. And I keep going, guys, you don't realize you're standing so close to an experience that will change everything about how you look at your life and how other people perceive you. You're right there, but you won't take the step. You won't move towards it like this and and i and i get it i'm not talking from some mountaintop trying to to to i understand why you might be hesitant to move towards it i mean we're asking you to move toward something you don't even really understand um and i i and i get that um but i gotta tell you um there's nothing in the world sweeter than knowing that the life that you live, not only has it affected you and your sobriety, but it also affects everybody that's around you, your loved ones that people care about you. The thousands and thousands of little busted up drunks and dope fiends that are still waiting for a solution. And you have that solution. That's some heady stuff. That is some stuff that is pretty amazing. um um two years after i met clifford so by that time what is it i'm nine years right at nine years sober i still have never sponsored anybody and i'm i'm still kind of um i'm kind of myers the shoot from the hip kind of guy i'll say something funny to make you laugh but i'm not really clear on some of this other stuff by by now i know and understand the book a bit i kind to understand what's there. And I won't go into it a lot, but I'm just going to Clifford tricked me and to go into a place one night to carry the message. And our group was really, really big at carrying the message other places with when COVID hit, we had 52 commitments a week to carry the message, other places, not counting our three meetings a week, we were going to 52 meetings that we had 13 commitments on Wednesday only just go into treatment centers and wind up joints and jails and places that we could go and carry book studies um and it was it was some fun stuff well the Clifford tricked me into going and then didn't show up um I I was really good at volunteering to drive him around because he was pretty old at that time and I'd drive him to places and then I'd walk outside and talk on my cell phone while he was talking inside it was crazy um and so he tricked me into going to Salvation Army by myself. And I did. And then when I realized that nobody else was going to show up, I realized That I was going to have to do it. And so I stood at that turning point. And I had to make the decision, I can either leave, or I can stay and protect our commitment. And that's what I chose to do. And, and it was life changing, guys, it blew me away. What it I've never been the same since then. And everything in my being. Everything in me is screaming, Myers, you're too busy. You're too slow. You feel in the blank. I've got all of these excuses why I can't do 12-step work. Because it had been painted as optional for me, that's what I was doing. Somebody asked me to drive a bus for a jitter joint, a little treatment center not too far from where I lived and they wanted me to go pick them up, take them to a meeting, bring them back and that was it. That's all they wanted me to do and so I did and guys let me I milked that thing forever. I mean people would say what about 12 step work? I'd go yeah I drove that bus out there at that treatment center and y'all see I mean i would i would have milked it forever had clifford not been in the picture like that and clifford was going wait a minute let me see if i got this right you did how long ago was that and i said i don't know five or six years and he said that's all you've done in five or sechs years is drive that bus and i said well i make coffee sometimes he saidthat's not what bill wilson was talking about and he goes how do you know i said how doyouknowand he said because they didn't have any meetings in those days like that at best they had one meeting a week and i went yes sir okay i get it um you y'all will be your worst enemy because i think a lot of y' all are put together you're wired just like me you'll be your worse enemy you'll talk yourself out of listen when i get this job thing worked out and everything gets on level ground then i'll go do some 12-step work or or when i Get That Girl She's Pretty Special When I Get All That Sealed Up and delivered it's going to be sweet like that then i'll i'll do uh-uh um i used to call clifford pissed off at at customers or employees or something like this i would call him and i'd say clifford listen this is driving me crazy i need to talk about this he said well okay well i tell you what myers let's talk about it later on this afternoon right now i've got a commitment over at the 24-hour club and i can't do it i've Got somebody here that i'm trying to do a fifth step with and can you go over there and just share with them a little bit and talk to them a little bit and i'm going oh my life is coming apart that guy he he he disrespected me and and clifford goes i know i know dude we'll talk about it this afternoon i promise you we'll talk about just go on over there and and and run that little meeting for me okay how will this happen five or six different times guys and let me tell you i can remember always going over there pissed at clifford because he made me leave my own work to go over there and carry this message to these to the 24-hour club is i don't know it's just they've redone it now it's all fancy now but in those days it was a beat-up old house that smelled surprisingly like urine uh all the time i mean it was just like crazy urine and old grease because they they used to cook chicken fried steaks in there all the time and don't ask we'll talk about it later but the um i'd so i go in there and um but i gotta tell you in all of the years that i did that i can't ever remember calling clifford back ever and it would it took years for me to think back and went myers that's so weird he would say come do this i'd go do that and then all of a sudden you know i'm not i'm not scratching around i'm i've been talking to to 30 guys that have been sleeping on the floor on green mats every night six inches apart from each other and i'm talking to these guys and all of a sudden the fact that some sales guy disrespected me or whatever like i don't who gives a rat's rear i don'T why would i why would it be such a big deal this is what's so amazing about this about this this whole picture in 1944 or 1942 um bill wilson wrote this little piece is that our chief responsibility to the newcomer is an adequate presentation of the program our chief responsibility to the new comer one of the things that drives me nuts about meetings today i used to before covid stuff I was traveling every week. I was gone almost every week and I'd walk into meetings and I would see little whiteboards with rules on there and you can't chair until you've been sober for six months. You can't sponsor until you're been sober for a year and we see all this stuff like that and I'm not knocking it. Well, I am sort of. I'm trying not to be real critical but by the same token sometimes you have to say something that is critical because it's so important And listen, there's a guy down around Houston, Texas. Harris County is one of the most populated counties in the country, in the United States. It's probably the third most populated county in the united states and he sent me some specs, some statistical stuff from the intergroup office in Harris County. And in 2020, right before COVID hit, the year preceding that, maybe it was 2019, they had a little over 16,000 desire chips that they had sold out of their intergroup office. That's 16, 000 people that picked up desire chips. Guess how many guess how many one month chips because they've got the records because based on how many they sold. Guess how many one month chips they sold? Right at 6,000. I'm rounding up or down a couple of hundred just because my head won't take the figures like that. Guys, listen to me. That's 10,000 people that were gone in one month. 10,00 people that we're gone now, I understand that's not science and people go, well, you know, some people decided they didn't want to stay in AA. Some people did. Some people, I get it. I get all of that. But listen, the piece that's important to understand is, is that at some point in time, each one of us collectively needs to sit still in a meeting, close our eyes and listen to what the newcomer is hearing. is the newcomer hearing a solution spiritually based that will change their life or are they hearing a bunch of chicken shit one-liners um that are destined to wear them out uh within a year so they're going to get so tired of hearing the same stuff like that that they just leave our message is a message of depth and weight and yet because we're so willing to be nice to everybody, and we don't want to be critical. I get that. I don't want to being critical either. But I gotta say, at some point in time, we need to be responsible, or we're going to lose the very fellowship that saved our life, and saved millions and millions of people before us. It's important that we protect what we've been given. And that's the reason why I think that's the reason I love book studies, literature based meetings. I love those meetings where we can go and study the text. And one of the most freeing things that ever happened to me was when I began to understand what the text was about. I understand what alcoholism was. It wasn't my DWI or my jail or the other stuff like that. It was it was physical part and a mental part and and a spiritual part. And but I need to be able to explain that so that when people come up and they need help, we need to be able To give them what the truth is. My story is important. But when Jessica needs help like that, she needs more than just my story. Because after she's heard my story three times, she's going to go shoot Marsh. Shut up. I don't it's not helping me any. I didn't eat out of a dumpster like you did. I Didn't do the things that you did like that. But what if I slid in sideways to Jessica and I said, Jessica, sweetheart, let me see if I can help you understand the nature of the disease that's getting ready to kick your rear end of the ground. Statistically, you're going to die or get locked up. Let's see if we can't head off in the other direction. And then I tell her what that's about and what the life-changing steps is about and pull her with this vision of how cool all this stuff could be and how free our life could be. Now, that's a message of depth and weight uh that's a message that would change stuff and so i just think it's it's important that we do that if we had more people in book studies and less people sitting um in in jillions and jillions of other meetings i'm not knocking discussion meetings guys they're they're there it's it's super i just don't know why there's got to be so many of them at the expense of other readings um that's i guess that's my only only uh only rub on that thing Let me tell you a fast story. It's a it's a stupid story. Maybe the stupidest story you ever heard, but but you'll understand the point I'm trying to make when I when I do it. There's no prerequisite to helping other people to how long you've been sober. If I ask you if you could remember people in your life that were kind to you when you were growing up, every one of us could remember people that were kind to us teachers uh uh uh i mean there's always people around that were kind to it um when we're new in aa and i'm not really grounded in the work yet i haven't completely finished the steps myself like that um um and people show up i could either sit there and ignore them and talk to my peas or i could get off my rear end and go try to help them be comfortable. There's this guy who's a PGA junior golf pro. He's a, he's a golfer. He was a young kid and he, he, his life circles around golf. That's all he does is just talk golf, play golf, talk more golf. And for, for six or seven months, I had been trying to get him, I've sponsored the guy. And I've been trying to get him to understand that he could help people before all of this stuff, that he Could just change some lives just by being kind and getting out there and helping people. And he wouldn't listen to me. So I showed up at the meeting one night, he's over there trying to teach some some guys how to play golf. And, and that meeting is huge. It was like 200 people on a Tuesday night with this big glass window between us in that inner room where the meeting is held and I when I walked around the corner all those guys who I sponsored to were that were standing around this kid all just just just left they just walked away from him and he realized something was going on so he turned around and I was standing behind him and and I said dude let me ask you something he said I know I know i need to be busy helping somebody and I said yeah I just want to ask you this question cause do you know everybody that's in that meeting right now? And he said, yeah, I think so. I said, really, who's that? Who's that guy over there? We're looking through the glass and he goes, well, I don't know him. And I went, how about over there? No, I haven't met them either. I should see what I'm saying. You're missing the opportunity. Now, the reason I'm seeing is that this is helping others one on one. This is how people start and get a beat around how important stuff is. So I said I tell you what, once you stand here a minute and I'm going to, I want to show you something. And he said, Myers, I don't really, I said, just stand here. And so he's standing in front of the window looking in and I walk around the door and walk into the room. And when I walk in the room, there's a guy sitting there reading a big book. So let me remind everybody, nobody goes to a meeting to read a big books before the meeting. If somebody has got a big booking in front of them, they're lonely. They're hung out. You can take my word on it like that. There There may be some exceptions, but I haven't found one yet. The people get hung out and they just open a book and they're looking at it like this. So I walk up and I say, hey, that's a pretty cool book you've got there. What's your favorite part? And the guy goes, well, I just got it actually. I'm just, this is my first meeting and I'm going, no kidding, really. I said, hey, let me show you my favorite part. And he said, okay, sure. And I hand it to, he hands it to me and I turned to page 44 in We Agnostics and where it talks about if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely. There's two little qualifying pieces there in one sentence there. And, and I read it to him and he goes, Oh yeah. And I said, does that sound familiar? And he goes down, that's me. And so what I've done is I've just qualified this guy and he didn't even know I qualified. And So, but I'm, I'm sliding in sideways there. And, And so then I go, Hey, this meeting is getting ready to get really, really big. If you don't really know anybody here, why don't you come sit with me? If you want to, I'll sit right there with my big book so you see it right there and he goes yeah i see well just set it over there and then i can help you figure out how the meeting's going and how the book study works okay so he goes and sits and then I walk around I look for another big book there's one over there and walk over there's a little gal sitting there I go that's a pretty cool book right there what what's your favorite part oh well I just I don't know man I just i'm so new I just don't and we do the same thing again within a couple of minutes I got four people sitting next to me at that meeting and i look around and my little golf pro guys looking through the window and i just looked at him and went okay you could have done that too you see people go myers that's the stupidest story i ever heard and i'm going i get that but listen to me a second that meeting was on tuesday night i was able to help four different people get hooked up with good sponsorship get hooked up understand what the foundation meeting was what the book study was what all this other stuff was that we were doing that night and on Thursday night when I showed up at the meeting um guess who they were waiting for me because I'm their new bestie I'm then I'm their new buddy like that and and it's like that's how we began um was I sponsoring everybody that I talk to? No, I can't do that. And nobody can. But I could be so completely absorbed in their stuff that I don't think about my stuff. And as a result, we end up in a situation where people have an opportunity to learn something completely different about this deal. As I got to tell you, Joe McQueenie and I'll close with this. Joe Mcweenie told me one time at joe and charlie fame that guy joe told me he said myers he said he said you always make this more complicated than it has to be it always always boils down to two things how much time are you spending with god every day how much times have you spent with god and how much time are you spinning with god's kids and i went it's got to be more complicated than that he said it's not it's if you'll pay attention to the thing the disciplines of 11 and 12 at the end of these steps is the, is the piece that will guarantee whether or not your life is powder dry or whether your life is rich and full and full of hope that you could help somebody else. You see, it's a game changer. And it was the part that it eluded me completely. We need to please stop painting this picture that people can A, work the steps as long as they want to and take as much time as they want to. Time is not our friend because eventually you'll become unwilling to do it and you won't do it after that like that. We don't have unlimited time. And once we get started, it's best to just finish the stuff and then get off our rear end and realize that we're no longer doing this for us. We're doing it for them. And the moment we make that perceptual shift, then life gets really, really sweet. It gets pretty, pretty special. Man, I better shut up. I want to hear what you guys got to say anyway like that. Thank y'all.